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Updated: May 7, 2026

A Pathway Association Study Tool for GWAS Analyses of Metabolic Pathway Information
Published on: July 1, 2020
Gene-based GWAS and biological pathway analysis of the resilience of executive functioning
Shubhabrata Mukherjee1, Sungeun Kim, Vijay K Ramanan
1Department of Medicine, University of Washington, Box 359780, 325 Ninth Avenue, Seattle, WA, 98104, USA, smukherj@u.washington.edu.
Abstract:
Resilience in executive functioning (EF) is characterized by high EF measured by neuropsychological test performance despite structural brain damage from neurodegenerative conditions. We previously reported single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genome-wide association study (GWAS) results for EF resilience. Here, we report gene- and pathway-based analyses of the same resilience phenotype, using an optimal SNP-set (Sequence) Kernel Association Test (SKAT) for gene-based analyses (conservative threshold for genome-wide significance = 0.05/18,123 = 2.8 × 10(-6)) and the gene-set enrichment package GSA-SNP for biological pathway analyses (False discovery rate (FDR) < 0.05). Gene-based analyses found a genome-wide significant association between RNASE13 and EF resilience (p = 1.33 × 10(-7)). Genetic pathways involved with dendritic/neuron spine, presynaptic membrane, postsynaptic density, etc., were enriched with association to EF resilience. Although replication of these results is necessary, our findings indicate the potential value of gene- and pathway-based analyses in research on determinants of cognitive resilience.
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